The Gold Standard

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 9:18 pm

I've also been meaning to ask this, too, but how come nationalism only got invented recently?

I understand why China couldn't get onto the deal, but how come the Roman Empire or Alexander the Great didn't do this way back when? It seems like the (relatively) advantages of nationalism were just too kick ass to make us wonder how feudalism and mercantilism displaced it. Did it not just occur to them, was there just too much resentment in the empire, what?

Cielingcat · Post by **Cielingcat** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 9:24 pm

Would it not have had something to do with the rather meager means of communication back in those days?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 9:43 pm

Empires were founded on vassalage. The idea of synthesizing an identity for people to share in your city and another city is frankly pretty strange. Until relatively recently, you either owned a foreign city or had a compact with another city. Having another city be "the same" as your city or even you family is something that required a fair grounding in social science.

-Username17

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 9:56 pm

You need more of a difference between you and someone you have dealings with further away than you and the next city over.

Traditionally, people did not roam far from their home town, and did not have larger identities as a group, except when faced with a larger, obviously foreign influence.

Even today in much of the world your neighbors and family are far more important than the nation.

Technology dilutes this, but where technology fails, you get sectarian violence as people realize there are different people right next door.

Paper money just couldn't compete with the fact that everyone is out for themselves.

-Crissa

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 8:46 pm

Having another city be "the same" as your city or even you family is something that required a fair grounding in social science.

I heard a theory once way back when that stated that improvements in morality and social science only came about when people started expanding their 'in' group and started treating less like crap the people in their 'out' group.

Does anyone know what facilitated this change, if this theory is true? It always seemed kind of random that in the span of one generation people decided that it's not okay to torture and kill religious minorities when in the previous one people practiced blood libel and worse all of the time and no one cared. I mean, Europe's shameful obsession with anti-semitism lasted for centuries and then not 30 or 40 years later talking bad about Jews is now the social equivalent of taking a shit on someone's children.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 9:15 pm

The good guys won, Lago. Selling to other people became worth more than killing them.

There is evidence that this has come and gone in history as well, so it might go away again...

-Crissa

Bigode · Post by **Bigode** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 12:21 am

Crissa wrote:The good guys won, Lago. Selling to other people became worth more than killing them.

There is evidence that this has come and gone in history as well, so it might go away again...

-Crissa

Actually, it's just that, having the world "become smaller", the "out" group was shoved farther away; see Africa. The fact that commodities are paid in blood was just forgotten by most.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 12:55 am

Bigode wrote:
Crissa wrote:The good guys won, Lago. Selling to other people became worth more than killing them.

There is evidence that this has come and gone in history as well, so it might go away again...

-Crissa
Actually, it's just that, having the world "become smaller", the "out" group was shoved farther away; see Africa. The fact that commodities are paid in blood was just forgotten by most.

The "out" group is also in a darker area. Africa, South America, some of the deeper reaches of asia. I don't mean darker as a bad pun for black or any other of the associated skin pigmentations with the other regions . I just mean it as in we might as well put a blindfold over our eyes to what's going on there.

The good guys won to a degree, yes. So did the bad guys. The good guys had to compromise with the bad guys to keep the world going.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Sat Oct 04, 2008 5:46 pm

Hey, I've found this stuff on the gold standard and other economic stuff posted on this board pretty enlightening. Thanks!

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 6:58 pm

So: why is gold still traded so heavily if we are on a fiat currency now?

As far as I know it's utilitarian purposes aren't as far-reaching as the other precious/semi-precious metals.

Also can someone tell me if gold flucutuates randomly with the economic ups and downs? Or does it actually have a specific flow? I know this isn't exactly rocket science but my wife was theorizing that people hoard gold and sell it off in times of need. Is this sitll the case? It'

With a fiat currency, what's the use?

Absentminded_Wizard · Post by **Absentminded_Wizard** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 8:33 pm

People still like gold because it's shiny and makes good-looking jewelry. Therefore, gold still is traded as a commodity. Its price fluctuates due to all kinds of factors just like any other traded good.

It looks like you're making the classical error of assuming that the demand for something is based entirely on utility. That kind of thinking was discredited a century ago.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 9:10 pm

Absentminded_Wizard wrote:People still like gold because it's shiny and makes good-looking jewelry.

And it's a great conductor that doesn't tarnish and is incredibly easy to work.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 9:25 pm

Just like the price for houses went up when other investments were soft "They're not making more land!" gold tends to go up when there's a downturn in the market.

But it doesn't usually keep up with general inflation.

-Crissa

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 11:26 pm

Gold has a lot more industrial uses now then what we had in the past.

Hell, that whole reason why they picked gold as a standard instead of, say, iron was because gold didn't have a lot of secondary uses. Even if aliens brainwashed humans into thinking that gold was worthless as jewelry, there would nowadays still be a huge demand for it.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 11:31 pm

Also, hopefully, one day, maybe, the good guys will keep winning more territory.

The fact that you actually have to hide and gloss over the fact nowadays that people are dying for your elite tennis shoes is encouraging in a twisted sort of way. So I still hold out hope one day that technology advances to the point where people don't need to die to make your elite tennis shoes and removes the socioeconomic reasons for exploiting people.

That is, if we don't simultaneously have a world food shortage, nuclear warfare, global warming, or robot singularity occur while getting there.